446 Part VI: European Empires in Asia
ing officials on the basis of scholarship in the Confucian classics and created a
script for their language derived from Chinese characters. The Jesuits had little
success with this Sinicized elite, but by the nineteenth century there were more
Christians in Vietnam than in all of China. The Jesuits created a romanized
script for Vietnamese, which eventually beat out the Chinese script. The Chris-
tianization of Vietnam continued for the next 200 years; persecution of Chris-
tians did not begin until the nineteenth century, when it provided a pretext for
French invasion.English and Dutch Merchant Companies
When the Spanish and Portuguese were powerful enough to divide the
world between them, they didn’t leave any little spaces for other nations, and
consequently they largely owned the sixteenth century, reducing people like Sir
Francis Drake to risky adventures and piracy. But when the English defeated
the Spanish Armada in 1588, the seas were less dangerous for English and
Dutch sailors who wanted their share of discovery and trade. The Dutch were a
bit ahead of the English, with an excellent center of cartography in Antwerp,
ambitious merchant houses, and nationalist loathing of the Spanish tyrants
they had only recently escaped. In the 1590s, they sent no less than 91 ships to
run the Spanish blockade to the Spice Islands. English ships were having less
success, although Ralph Fitch had visited Mughal Emperor Akbar’s two capi-
tal cities in 1585 and reported that each was twice the size of London. At that
point, England’s only ambition was a share of the Indonesian spice trade.
At the beginning of the seventeenth century two unique and crucial organi-
zations were founded. On the last day of 1600, Queen Elizabeth I signed a
charter creating the East India Company; in 1602 the Dutch East India Com-
pany was chartered (the VOC, for Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie). Both
were joint-stock companies, early forms of the financial corporation. No Eng-
lish or Dutch merchant could afford the huge costs and risks of outfitting a ship
and supporting it for a two-year voyage to Southeast Asia; one ship, the Red
Dragon, cost 3,700 pounds and took four years for a round-trip. But 217 Lon-
don merchants each contributed a few hundred pounds, thus forming the first
great trading company. The Dutch raised 10 times more capital than the British
and thus were able to send 38 ships to the Indian Ocean, where they defeated
the Portuguese fleet and seized Amboina. The English were able to send out
only four ships on their first venture, but their risk was handsomely repaid by
an average profit of 170 percent on the first seven voyages.
The crowns of both countries granted their corporation a monopoly on
trade for a specified number of years and the right to conclude treaties with
native princes, maintain armed forces, build forts, and found “factories,” which
then meant only warehouses and trade establishments in foreign places. Both
companies began as trade enterprises but ended up deeply involved in local
politics, joined Asian princes in warfare, and ended up as territorial empires.
Merchants became colonial administrators, “factories” grew to huge cities, and